US Chamber Of Commerce: Communicating With Woman Whose Sad Story We Manipulated Is Harassment
from the um-no dept
You may recall that last week we had a post about a new propaganda campaign from the lobbying giant, the US Chamber of Commerce (who thrives off the fact that people falsely assume they're the US Department of Commerce, rather than a private lobbying group). The video, in support of the terrible and dangerous PROTECT IP Act continues the favorite talking points of the dishonest supporters of that bill, which is to conflate the problem of fake (and potentially dangerous) drugs with copyright infringement. The two things are totally and completely different, but by tugging on your heart strings about someone who died from ingesting fake drugs, the US Chamber of Commerce (and other lobbyists and politicians) hopes to ram through the PROTECT IP Act, despite its myriad problems. In this case, the campaign involved a heart-string-pulling video from a woman talking about a friend of hers who had died after taking some counterfeit drugs that had lead in them.Of course, the folks in the Techdirt community quickly pointed out numerous other problems with the propaganda campaign, including the fact that the "example" in the video took place in Canada, meaning that a US law wouldn't have meant anything at all. Separately, and more importantly, it was pointed out that the Operation in Our Sites effort by ICE, which was the basis for PROTECT IP, has yet to target a single online drug site. They just use the scare factor of fake drugs to go after websites based on questionable reasons and evidence.
One of our regular commenters, Prometheefeu, suggested that the woman in the video might not know that she was being manipulated this way by the US Chamber of Commerce and suggested that the community here team up to draft a letter to explain why her friend's tragic story is being exploited by the US Chamber of Commerce to support a law that's really focused on an entirely different issue. Prometheefeu mentioned that he had found the woman's address and phone number, but he did not give that information out. He just suggested that we write her a letter. He even explicitly told people not to harass (or, as he said, "prank/lulz") the woman, noting (correctly) that this would make you a "counterproductive idiot."
All of this is perfectly reasonable. Unless, of course, you're the US Chamber of Commerce.
They called us and left a voicemail specifically calling out that comment, and saying that our commenter was calling for people to "harass" the woman in their video and asking us to delete the comment. Now, it seems that we're all in agreement that harassing this woman would be idiotic. But, apparently the US Chamber of Commerce feels that writing a reasoned letter to someone to explain why the Chamber of Commerce is manipulating your story counts as "harassment."
Now that strikes me as something of a double standard. After all, the Chamber of Commerce itself runs campaigns asking people to send "20,000 letters in 20 days" in order to flood Congress in support of certain bills. But, someone wants to draft a single letter to someone who appears in a ridiculously misleading US Chamber of Commerce video... and it's harassment?
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Filed Under: counterfeit drugs, harassment, lobbying, protect ip, rational discussion
Companies: us chamber of commerce
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Why would the woman be a LuLz target anyway?
Nicely done CoC....
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Good Lord
I admit I was one of those people. Thanks for clearing that up.
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Re: Good Lord
US COC is as credible as imagination. They are something that shouldn't even exist. It's pretty much an embarrassment to the entire country. I wonder how much Murdoch pays them these days?
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Re: Re: Good Lord
I'm not being conspiratorial when I say that "tort reform" is a hot button issue with them along with copyright law favored to industry interests.
Consumers aren't even an issue.
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But no. We shouldn't use our LOICs to greet them. Ooops...
Now srsly, I'd not only send the letter but also post here on techdirt and make as much noise as possible. That's the second time I say Streisand Effect today lol!
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operation chamber of commerce block, everyone pull out your loic, grab your vpns and take aim!
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20,000 letters in 20 days
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J.
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Hypocrites
Apparently, the US Chamber of Commerce, at some point, reached out themselves, and contacted this woman. The also sent a film crew.
Why did they harass her so??!!!
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The US Chamber of Commerce is a vast sea of putrescent lies
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Re: The US Chamber of Commerce is a vast sea of putrescent lies
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Re: Re: The US Chamber of Commerce is a vast sea of putrescent lies
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You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
You people are really arrogant to even discuss it.
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Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
But Techdirt can't contact her cuz that would be wrong?
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Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
"You people are really arrogant"
When all else fails - ad hominem
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Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
This is NOT harassment, next time look up the actual legal definition of harassment before you spout off and annoy my reading sense please.
Also note that intent plays a big part in harassment.
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Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
Then there is the part where she shares her story with the whole world as propaganda for a bill in the house of representative. She has joined the public debate and is definitely fair game for a polite letter trying to explain to her that she is making a mistake. If she does not want to be part of the public debate, she shouldn't go on the record telling her story to the world and pushing legislation.
As for forcible enlightenment, I don't see how that is. Sending a letter to someone does not force them to read it or pay any attention to its content or reasoning. There is nothing arrogant about trying to converse with those on the other side of the aisle.
As it turns out no letter was sent by me. Nobody responded to my offer and I didn't feel like sending a letter coming from me alone would have the effect I was hoping for.
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Re: Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
Agreed with your overall post, just wanted to make a minor clarification. The bill is currently in the Senate, not the House. The House version (which I'm hearing will be even worse) has not yet been introduced.
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Re: You wish to forcibly enlighten her.
And you really, actually believe that someone here cares about your advise? Stunning!
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She has already given up some measure of privacy, and a few snail mail letters that are considered and articulate snail mail would violate what she's got left.
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I'd love then the CoC, or USG to charge me with harassment then. especially since I live in another country from both the USA and Canada.
I'll even place my full details with Mike with the order that he can release these to the CoC whenever they so request. I'm willing to state that their legal department would not like that scenario though.
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And this, my friend, is the problem with U.S.A. How can we expect to elect reasonable politicians, that act in the public interest, when the public is so clueless.
While I disagree with overzealous trademark law, I think this is something IP trolls can somewhat reasonably use to argue in favor of stricter trademark law (something I oppose, btw).
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I didn't really expect better from the CoC. (Though I didn't expect them to pay any attention to my comment.) I merely recommended we try to open dialog with someone whose tragic story they are abusing. As Mike pointed out, I specifically discouraged harassing that woman because I know that some people (mostly under 16) will wrongly think it's a good idea. The CoC's response was to try to get such reasonable speech censored. Nothing more consistent than using censorship in the promotion of a censorship bill I suppose.
Surely if the CoC has its way with PROTECT IP, sites like Techdirt will be taken down for commenters advocating open dialog instead of blind allegiance to the tenets of IP. I suppose Adam Smith was right, business organizations are always out to screw the public and their competitors.
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Draft the bills and sent it to congress, if you are not able to do so, you are not a player in the game of politics anymore and nobody cares about what you think.
That is how people counteract special interest groups like the US Chamber Of Commerce by doing exactly what they are doing but in a national scale.
There are no special interest groups that have national support from a majority of the population yet, the one that comes close to it, it is the Tea Party which is a loose group of smaller groups that is doing something similar collecting pledges from politicians and in return giving them financial and human resources, but they don't make bills, they leave it to others to do the work and probably will be sorry for it.
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But this part is false...
That's just not true:
http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1107/110726washingtondc.htm
"One of ICE HSI's most significant cases involved Houston resident Kevin Xu. Xu's company sold counterfeit drugs online and distributed them throughout the United States and United Kingdom, primarily through the mail and courier services. Legitimate wholesalers began selling these counterfeit drugs, not realizing that the products weren't the real thing. "
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Re: But this part is false...
That's just not true:
http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1107/110726washingtondc.htm
"One of ICE HSI's most significant cases involved Houston resident Kevin Xu. Xu's company sold counterfeit drugs online and distributed them throughout the United States and United Kingdom, primarily through the mail and courier services. Legitimate wholesalers began selling these counterfeit drugs, not realizing that the products weren't the real thing. "
Was that part of Operation In Our Sites? Doesn't look like it...
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